Using primary sources in research papers and projects is a
time-honored way to engage students with primary historical materials. Yet primary sources
can be incorporated into all phases of instruction. This framework will help you use
primary sources throughout your teaching.

For years, historians and other educators have understood the value
of primary sources in K-12 education. Two key reasons for including primary sources in the
curriculum are:

Primary sources expose students to multiple perspectives on great
issues of the past and present. History, after all, deals with matters that were furiously
debated by the participants. Interpretations of the past are furiously debated as well,
among historians, policy makers, politicians, and ordinary citizens. By working with
primary sources, students can become involved in these debates.

Primary sources help students develop knowledge, skills, and
analytical abilities. By dealing directly with primary sources, students engage in asking
questions, thinking critically, making intelligent inferences, and developing reasoned
explanations and interpretations of events and issues in the past and present.

: Here are some questions to
answer before selecting primary sources for your students:

Interest

- What kinds of sources are of
particular interest to my students?

- What kinds of sources are of
particular interest to my students?

Reading Level - How difficult is the
reading level of the primary source compared to my students' abilities? What might help my
students comprehend this material (a glossary of terms, for example)?

Length - How long is the source? Do I need
to excerpt a portion of the source given my students' abilities and/or classroom time
constraints? How do I ensure that the original meaning of the source is preserved in the
excerpt?

Points of View - Are various points of
view on a given topic, event, or issue fairly represented in the sources I have chosen to
use? Have I achieved proper balance among the competing points of view?

Variety of Sources - Have I included a
variety of types of sources (e.g., published, unpublished, text, visual, and artifacts)?

Location - Where can I or my students find
the sources we need (the school or public library, the local history society, over the
Internet)?

Focus Activities

Focus activities can be used to introduce a topic or to
re-engage students during a longer unit of instruction. Use one or two short primary
sources to begin a lesson, unit, or block of instruction.

For focus activities, choose primary sources that:

present a puzzle;

challenge a stereotype or conventional wisdom;

present a contradiction;

offer an insight (or aha! experience);

promote empathy (through a human interest story);

present a generalization or explanation against which different
generalizations or explanations can be compared later.

Present focus activities using the following techniques:

Generate one or two well-crafted questions about the sources. Use the
questions to spark a class discussion or as a task for pairs of students to answer.

Ask students to freely write their reactions to a thought-provoking
document. Then, as a class, compare different reactions prompted by the document.

After reviewing one or two primary sources, have small groups of
students generate a list of questions about the upcoming topic of instruction.

Use contemporary primary sources to focus instruction on a historical
period. For example, use a modern newspaper editorial on immigration, minimum wage, or
welfare reform as a springboard into exploration of those issues in the past. Ask students
to make predictions about historical debates based on what they have read in contemporary
editorials. Similarly, a historical source on a recurrent topic can be used to spur
inquiry into current debate on that recurring issue.